‘Are you on your way out?’

There are two uniformed officers on the driveway as I get out of the car. The one who’s spoken is the taller of the two – a typical British bobby. He stands rigid in his crisp uniform with closely cropped dark hair.

I lean on the driver’s door as I reply: ‘On my way to work.’

‘I’m PC Heath and this is PC Harvey,’ the officer says. ‘Weren’t you expecting us?’

My baffled look is enough to give them an answer. ‘I was told you didn’t have time to come out,’ I reply.

The two officers turn to each other and PC Harvey shrugs. He’s the smaller of the pair, with tight blond curls and doesn’t have the same stiff posture of his colleague.

‘It was passed to us this morning,’ PC Heath says. ‘We assumed you’d been told we were coming by at eleven…?’

‘All I got was a crime reference number. I’ve cleaned up the broken glass from inside – and the glazier came this morning to replace the pane.’

PC Heath nods along as if this sort of miscommunication is perfectly normal. ‘We should probably still take a statement, assuming you have time,’ he says. ‘We’ve had a few reports of youths causing disturbances in the area.’

I glance past him along the street, as if expecting to see a gang of errant young people starting a riot a few doors down. There’s nothing, of course.

‘What sort of disturbance?’ I ask.

‘Late-night noise, knock-and-runs – that sort of thing.’

It’s all news to me but this is what I wanted in the first place, so it seems silly to send them away now. If Graham makes a fuss about me being even later than I said, I’ll tell him the truth – that I was talking to the police.

We enter the house through the front door and then I talk the officers through everything from the previous evening. They check the back door, not that there’s much to see now, and then we go through the whole rigmarole of me explaining that it doesn’t look as if anything was taken. I don’t bring up the money, just in case it was Olivia who took it.

I show them out to the back garden and both officers walk slowly along the length of the flower beds. Other than a few unfriendly deposits from next door’s cat, there’s little to see. Certainly no footprints belonging to someone who might have come over the fence. The officers ask about what’s on the other side and we end up going upstairs so they are high enough to see. There’s a narrow lane that skirts the back of our house, separating it from the properties beyond. The height of the respective fences on both sides means it’s permanently in darkness. Through the winter, frost can sit on the ground for weeks at a time. It’s a cut-through to get from one part of the estate to another, frequently used by pedestrians and cyclists to save them having to go the long way round to get to the bus stop or shops.

Some of the houses backing onto the lane have gates, allowing them to leave via the back of the house. Ours doesn’t – it’s one long eight-foot fence.

The officers don’t say much when I tell them that Dan thought it could have been some kids coming in to retrieve a ball. It would have been a decent kick, perhaps coming from one of the gardens that back onto ours across the path. PC Heath asks if we’ve ever found wayward balls in the garden before and I have to admit that we haven’t. We’ve never had issues with anything like that. Despite his mention of trouble in the area, I haven’t seen any of it. The evenings are quiet and we haven’t had anyone knocking and running off. Dan and I have lived here for almost as long as we’ve been married and we’ve never been burgled. The only thing I can remember is that a dead mouse was left on our doorstep a year or so ago – but we’re pretty sure that was down to next door’s cat.

PC Harvey takes notes while PC Heath asks the questions. It doesn’t feel as if there’s much I can say, let alone much they can do. I get the sense they knew it would be a waste of time before they pulled up. It’s probably an excuse to get out of their office for an hour or two – and I can’t blame them for that.

They give me a phone number to call if I notice anything has gone missing, or to report anything new.

The garage door is still open, so we leave the house that way. I get on with locking the doors that connect to the house but, when I turn, both officers are standing in the middle of the empty garage, close to the drain.

PC Harvey points at a spot on the floor and looks up to me: ‘Do you know there’s blood on the ground?’ he asks.